1. News Articles, like how Google New does it on the second part of its page. Listing categories on each side with news stories that link straight to the source.

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2. Easy to use "new page" system that can be edited/created by specific moderators/users assigned by the Admin.

3. Customizable User Profiles w/friendslist, comments, etc..

4. User Groups.

5. Some sort of User vs User script allowing them to have a point/counterpoint argument that other users can vote on.

Similar to the one at FanNation does it.

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6. Games Arcade

7. Leaderboard for the games arcade and for the User vs User thing if possible.

8. The ability for Contributors to help in the posting of news directly to the site.

9. A "News Flash" type element that allows a series of images and top news to be displayed near the top of the site, with a short blurb about the image/story. Kinda like Sports Illustrated has done up on the left side of their site.... just quite a bit smaller for me.

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10. Banner Ad for the top with my site logo on the left as is becoming standard for a lot of sites.

11. A comment/talkback system for news and articles.

12. Advertising integration, Adsense, etc...

13. Gallery

14. Video of the day section (mostly for news conferences, etc)

15. As much Integration with forum sofware(vB if possible), comments system, and the main site. One username/registration/login for everything.

The actual content is not what i need of course.

I have a large group of writers who are ready to help me "fill out" the site, what i need is the skeleton or backbone of the site.

CMS system like Joomla, Drupal, etc... will be fine, im sure learning how to use them wont be too difficult, at least from a content generation PoV.

I tried doing it myself with Joomla and got stuck at manipulating the modules and stuff.

Installing it on my WAMP server was easy, as was installing templates... but once i had to add in any of the features i wanted in the modules, i had a hard time getting them to work right.

Whichever way is easiest and most cost effective for someone like myself who is new to this business and learning as he goes.

If that means regular CSS+HTML pages with some PHP scripts installed to do most of what i want and sacrificing a few of my desired features... than that will have to do.

Logos and artwork can all be stock placeholders that we will replace at a later date.